


in this bed after the war

by magisterequitum



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:53:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drift is silent. </p><p>That's what they say about it. What they teach in the program, drill into your head. A silence that's punctuated and illustrated with images, slow filtered memories that play like a broken film record. Hopscotching around and trying to suck you in. </p><p>After it's silent too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in this bed after the war

The drift is silent. 

That's what they say about it. What they teach in the program, drill into your head. A silence that's punctuated and illustrated with images, slow filtered memories that play like a broken film record. Hopscotching around and trying to suck you in. 

After it's silent too. 

When it really shouldn't be, but it is. There's press hounding at them for statements and talk show appearances and won't you just tell them how it was, saviors of the Earth and man-kind. There's the funerals and parades. There's the celebration and the grieving. There's the dismantling of the base, scientists moving things about, a new order taking shape. 

Raleigh's head doesn't filter any of it though. It's quiet. 

He's not sure he left the drift. 

 

 

 

"And what was it like in the breach? In between?" 

Raleigh blinks slow under the harsh lights of the network cameras. The woman across from him has brassy red hair, her teeth shiny white as she waits for his answer. That's what they all want: answers. Something to turn it into a sensation. Something, Herc had said, to forget the dead and the ruined cities. 

He blinks again and swallows. Inhales once. "Like free-falling." 

 

 

 

Marshal Pentecost's funeral is attended by too many people that hadn't believed in him. 

No one says anything about it. Not their group, but the cut eyes and sharp looks aren't held back either. 

Mako stands straight and front, her back a sharp line, her chin pointed toward the sky. The wind lifts the blue strands of her hair. She stares forward while the commendations and remembrances and stories and kind words are said. 

Her eyes shine with wetness later though, when everyone has turned away, and her fingers reach for his. Raleigh grips her hand till her knuckles go white. 

 

 

Sleeping in a bunk doesn't bother him. Yancy and he always slept in twin beds as kids, and in the program it'd been the same. In a way the small bed is comforting. His legs and arms tucked against his sides, neck tilted to the side, completely still. That's before. 

Now he sleeps and is never still. 

If someone happened to watch, they'd see his head jerking left and right, mouth curling in a snarl, tendons in his arms straining. He wakes with a throat that's tight and starved for air, his legs cramped like he's been running. 

Raleigh blinks away grit sticking his eyelashes together, trying to focus his sight to see in the dark, waiting for the adjustment. The dreams had started after Yancy's death. Nightmares that left him screaming for months, trailing off till they became sparser in time but never leaving fully. The dreams after the portal had been nightmares of nothingness and being trapped. Of not breathing. 

One thing remains: he always remembers them. 

He remembers nothing now as he peers into the dark of his room in the base. 

There's just the harshness of his lungs sucking in oxygen, the pounding echo of his heart, and the blackness around him. 

 

 

After the helicopters had plucked them from the ocean, after the slaps on the back had been given, after the moments had passed and reality had sunk in, Raleigh and Mako had sat side by side on the empty scaffolding. Like before, only there was an empty hanger now to look out at. 

They'd said nothing for hours, just sat, pressed together so that the heat of their sides soaked into one another, a tangible reassurance. 

His shoulders had slumped and his breath had exhaled. "What do we do now?" 

Mako's throat had hummed, a little noise that filled the void. Her pinky had touched his then. 

 

 

 

Marshal Hansen gives them a report over eggs and toast later that morning. The base is struggling to shift to a new purpose now that there are no monsters for them to fight. Unrelenting and unwavering in just accepting to be cast aside, Hansen has drawn a line at taking the government's word as say-so. 

Raleigh over-salts his eggs as his thoughts are elsewhere. He filters in the noises from Hansen and the scientists, but it's the person sitting across from him that has his attention. 

Mako's eyes are red shot, blueish bruises under her eyes. 

 

 

 

MSNBC wants to do a joint morning interview. The two rockstar jaeger pilots side by side, telling it all, smiling wide for the cameras. 

"Do you dream?" 

He, of course, asks her this three minutes before they are do to go on stage. The assistant checking his microphone gives him a side-ways look. 

Mako gives him one similar. _now you ask this?_

She gives him a curt nod, a jerk of her chin towards her chest. 

 

 

 

Raleigh wakes, his leg twitching and skittering across the blanket. A hand reaches out and nails cut into his skin, a sharpness that grounds him in the room. No sound, just the nails that will no doubt leave little crescent moons as they scratch against the hair on his arms. 

"Mako," he whispers when his voice can work again. 

She makes a little noise and he realizes then that she must have been called into his room by his nightmare. She's kneeling against the bunk, her eyes peering down into his face. He sees that his hand rests on her thigh, and his fingers twitch as if to draw away. 

Mako pins him to stillness with a look. "You dream. You've been dreaming." 

He nods and feels his leg muscles unlock. "The other night," he asks, "that was your dream, right?" He phrases it as a question even though he doesn't really need to. 

Her mouth twists. "Yours are bothersome." 

He quirks his lips up, squinting up at her where she's hovering over him partially. "Well yours aren't that great either." 

Mako purses her lips and shakes her head, a sharp movement that sends her hair sliding across her cheek. "That's not what I meant. They bother you." 

"Yeah." He swallows, his tongue feeling thick all of a sudden. "Yours too?" 

She nods. "I," she pauses, gaze skittering away to the wall. "I miss him." 

He knows. The drift compatibility keeps them connected in ways no one could ever understand, the depths of what they'd seen and experienced in the ocean tying them together, and even though they've not talked about it, that they've deliberately not talked about it or anything of it, it doesn't matter. He knows. Just as she knows that he dreams about Yancy, about the others dead in the water, about his parents. 

Raleigh swings his body up, shuffling his legs over as Mako leans away, until he's sitting beside her. He deliberately presses his thigh against hers, his hand slipping down and away from her leg. It falls to rest on the blanket. "Yeah." 

His pinky touches hers, a simple skin connection that simplifies into a single point of contact that he can think on. Somehow he knows it does the same for her too. 

 

 

 

He over-salts his eggs again at breakfast. 

Both sets of eyes are red-shot. 

The mess is too loud. Neither of them hear it though.


End file.
